American Pastoral by Phillip Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Contrast. I could simply end my review of this novel with that one word. It’s the old guard V the new, the old world and American idealism clashes with the reality of an intrusive cultural upheaval in the 60s.
What incredibly woven prose. This is a character-driven plot, but the characters are so vivid, so thick, real, it has real page-turner potential, while the actual plot itself I could easily outline in only a paragraph or two. This is quintessential roth style, in other words, drag out the character analysis until we know them better than they know themselves.
The complexity that visits us here in these pages is the depths of the human condition, under stress, under change, under the demand of a new assertive communism tossing the proverbial wet blanket on the free American capitalist dream.
The complexity that visits us here in these pages is the depths of the human condition, under stress, under change, under the demand of a new assertive communism tossing the proverbial wet blanket on the free American capitalist dream.
There are historical plot points aplenty, and much to learn about the making of capital, the love of industry, the honesty of toil and creating the atmosphere of work and survival, even over and against change. Oh, and the glove business. The dismantling of the system is seen as inevitable in so many other ways, except for this stalwart being known as “The Swede”, a blonde Jewish athletic hero, yes very unlikely as that sounds, married to the Goy princess of New Jersey who has to make a bargain with the father-in-law for how much Christianity she will openly allow in their house, if they are wed.
I wanted to accuse Mr. Roth of authorial intrusion at one point when he so open handedly slapped us with a three-line sentence that summed up the communist manifesto’s rage against capitalism, at first impression seeming that it was Mr. Roth’s point of view. But as it turns out, I believe that jarring juxtaposition was a simple foreshadowing of the daughter’s revolutionary character, which we find is very true later on.
Contrast is what this story is all about. A great and sweeping novel of history and personal change with the characters as solid metaphors for the times they lived. The prose borders on insanity at times, only to slap us with the reality of the world in that day.
This should be on one of those “must read” lists.
5 stars out of 5.
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